Death in Rome: An ode to a fellow American expat

Me, left, and John Tuthill in Toscolana. John died Feb. 13 at age 69.
Me, left, and John Tuthill La Fraschetta Tuscolana. John died Feb. 13 at age 70.

When you die in heaven, does your soul stay there?

John Robert Tuthill hopes so. Like me, he lived in our vision of heaven.

Rome.

No one loved his life in Rome more than I do except John. We both shared so much here. I can’t count how many times we sat in our Abbey Theatre Irish Pub watching our beloved AS Roma and clinking beer mugs, saying, “Salute a Roma.” Not just to the team but to our adopted city.

Unlike the soccer club, Rome never broke our hearts.

We’ll never toast again. I lost one of my best friends in the world recently, a gut punch to a life suddenly less worth living without a great friend and also to the poleaxing realization that any day life in heaven can fade to black.

John and I in Marino. Photo by Marina Pascucci

The few facts we know

I got the news Feb. 15 while standing at the bottom of Cortina’s giant slalom run. I was covering the Winter Olympics for Colorado Public Radio, standing in a scrum of American reporters watching women skiers fly down the mountain.

My cell buzzed. It was Alessandro Castellani, the esteemed former sportswriter at ANSA, Italy’s wire service, and, like John and me, retired. I was busy. I wasn’t going to answer. But Alessandro always gives great tips on restaurants around Italy. I thought he might have some advice for Cortina.

“John, it’s Alessandro,” he said faintly over the cheers of the packed grandstands. “John, John Tuthill. He died.”

“WHAT?” 

Reporters turned from the mountain and glanced at me. I stepped out of the media pack and stood in the snow getting details. There weren’t many. John was found two nights earlier, alone, dead, in his apartment on the south side of Rome. Alessandro knew nothing else. We still know little.

I covered that giant slalom in a daze. An Italian won; an American finished 11th. I wrote my story quickly and spent the rest of the night in snowy Cortina reflecting on what we all lost.

In Civitavecchia. John often accompanied me on TraveLazio trips.

John’s similarities

What I lost was my mirror image. We had so much in common, we could’ve been twins, if only he wasn’t bald as a freshly laid egg and didn’t wear glasses that could make microbes visible.

How many similarities?

High school Class of ‘74. Check.

Never married. Check.

Childless. Check.

Retired. Check.

Retired in Rome. Check.

Writers. Check.

Tall. Check.

AS Roma fans. Check.

Liberal. Check.

At 69, the happiest we’ve ever been. Check.

We didn’t finish each other’s sentences but it was more him representing his native state’s motto: Minnesota nice. John Tuthill was so nice, he was even friends with people who weren’t worthy of his loyalty and kindness.

One night at one of our Expats Living in Rome Meetup exchanges, an obnoxious British woman came over and body shamed both of us. I was in her face within seconds and launched a full-scale online assault in a series of exchanges the following days.

John became her friend.

Another time in The Drunken Ship, a hangout for American study abroad students in hopping Campo de’ Fiori, I got in an ugly argument with one of only two Trump supporters I’ve met in 12 years in Rome, a Texan in his late 20s. We didn’t come to blows and John separated us before we did.

I stewed and swore off to the side, wishing the Texan would be burned alive by ghosts of gladiators past, his ashes thrown to the four winds. When we left, John wanted to say goodbye to him. I pulled him away.

But that’s who John was. He was everyone’s friend. He didn’t need friends. He had plenty. He just saw the good side in everyone.

And John had such a good side.

John and I with our friends, Tom Leitner and Ilaria Capobianco, at one of our many wine tastings.

What John was about

He had the curiosity of a wide-eyed child when it came to Italy. He was proud of his adopted country. He would tag along with Marina and me when we went off to villages in rural Lazio for our TraveLazio blog. 

He enthusiastically explored every museum. He looked around every corner. He tried every local delicacy. He drank every glass of local wine. And then some. 

He was always late when he met us. He never did figure out that Rome has the worst public transportation of any European capital and it’s imperative to leave early if you want to arrive anywhere on time. But that was John. He had faith in everyone and everything.

John and I at Abbey Theatre Irish Pub toasting Rome and Roma.

Well, not Donald Trump.

In his last Facebook messages to me sent three days before he died, he asked me, “Being a man who visits places in the world considered dangerous, what would be more dangerous, a tour of Afghanistan or attending the Rome/Napoli game in Diego Armando Maradona Stadium?”

“Depends on what you wear,” I answered.

“My Roma jersey.”

“I would not wear that to Naples.”

“Idea, ICE should be sent to Napoli wearing Roma attire.”

With Alessandro Castellani and Marina Pascucci at La Campana, a 500-year-old restaurant in Rome.

Being a Minneapolis native, he engaged me in long talks about ICE’s atrocities there. He told me about his friends back home, describing the city in much the same way my contacts in Syria described life under the al-Assad regime. While I cursed over long draws of our My Antonio Italian craft beers at Abbey, John remained reasoned, a controlled fury I wish I had.

He was as Minnesota as a loon ice fishing with a hockey stick. His Minnesota accent was straight out of Fargo. Yes, he called it meen-ah-SO-tah, drawing it out to where I didn’t know if he exaggerated the accent or really talked like that.

Like me and my Oregon Ducks, he loved his Minnesota Gophers, his alma mater. He’d show up at Abbey in his maroon and gold Minnesota jacket and I’d tease him about how in hell he ever got through Fiumicino Airport’s passport control wearing that.

He cursed the Minnesota Vikings and their dumb trades. He loved Minneapolis’ liberal bent. He hated the murder of George Floyd. He loved how Minneapolis, time and again, stood up in rage.

Alessandro sent me a message with his thoughts:

“John was a gentle and generous man, even a little too generous with some women, and he was often my companion on adventures in Tuscany, Umbria, and Ciociaria, where he always bought that Cesanese wine he loved so much. I will miss him, and I’m very sorry I didn’t take him back to Maremma to eat at Sandra’s: how many times has he asked me?”

At one of his Rome 10K runs with our friends, Patrick O’Byrne and Valeria Rossi.

What happened?

His cause of death remains a mystery. It took two days to inform his brother, Larry. What we do know is John’s friend, Nadine, called John that day asking what time they would meet. When he never responded, she became worried and went to his apartment building.

He didn’t answer.

She found the landlord and they opened the door. They found John dead. The family is now dealing with Italian authorities to claim his body and belongings.

What the hell happened?

He was so healthy. At 69, he ran 5 and 10 Ks around Rome and only in the last few years he stopped running marathons. He walked everywhere. He was lean and fit and seemingly ageless. He had epilepsy but medicine kept it under control. He never had an episode. We haven’t seen an autopsy report.

Yes, he died in his happy place: Rome. But that’s what hurts the most. He’ll never experience that happiness again. He loved that joy of waking up to the perfect cappuccino, of eating fresh, handmade pasta at a sun-splashed table in his neighborhood, of prowling the maze of windy alleys in Lazio hill towns.

On the beach in Nettuno.

But at least he experienced that for his 10 years here. While I am on Year 13, John’s death made me think of my own mortality. A recent PSA scare on my prostate turned out to be harmless. My artificial hip from August feels good as new. My right hand is normal two years after Dupuytren surgery.

My biggest health worry is a root extraction Wednesday.

Neither of us believed in heaven. But that doesn’t mean John has disappeared. For as long as I’m in Rome, I’ll always see his bald head bobbing above the crowd at Abbey, pounding the cobblestones in a Lazio village eyeing a little trattoria and making a stranger feel good about themselves.

Here’s a final salute to a fellow expat, to a fellow proud Romanista. FORZA ROMA! FORZA JOHN TUTHILL!

Sempre!